


Whiskers on Kittens

by convolutedConcussion



Category: Wynonna Earp (TV)
Genre: F/M, Just That "Honey I Found A Mysterious Child" Fic, Kid Fic, No Real Plot Actually
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-06-30
Updated: 2016-06-30
Packaged: 2018-07-19 07:35:35
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,906
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/7351873
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/convolutedConcussion/pseuds/convolutedConcussion
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>“Uh-huh.  Why is it here?”</p><p>“Well, it’s not a <i>normal</i> baby,” he mutters.</p><p>“Of course it isn’t,” she sighs, peering over his arm.  And, okay, the kid is cute—she can objectively say it’s a very cute kid, even if the thought of having even minimal contact with a child makes her want to run in the opposite direction—olive-skinned and curly-haired and batting the air with a tiny fist.  It’s also got the nice addition of pointy ears and eyes that are a few shades too light to be completely human, gold enough almost to glow.  “So, what is it?”</p><p>*no actual kittens, or whiskers</p>
            </blockquote>





	Whiskers on Kittens

The apartment they’re renting isn’t strictly “legal,” but neither are they so it kind of works out fine.  They pick up odd jobs both supernatural and not, never staying in one place too long—Wynonna starts to feel uneasy if she’s not in near-constant motion, but that feeling’s been loosening its grip on her in years past.  They settle a little longer, but nothing’s ever permanent.  At night, she muses out loud about where they should go next, whispers against his skin all the places she wants to see, asks him if he’s happy or if he regrets letting her drag him all over the place.  Sometimes he asks if she thinks he’d be happier in a suburb with 2.5 kids and a dog.  Others, he laughs and says that he only regrets letting her drag him to Kansas.  But every once in a while, he tells her in a tone totally void of sarcasm that he’s happy.

They have a pretty good thing going, all things considered.  It’s not perfect, but the curse is broken and she made it past thirty.  After all this time, she’d think she’d be able to stop being _shocked_ by the things she sees upon entering whatever rented space they’re occupying in any given place.

Today is not that day, apparently.

“Why is there an infant here?” she asks, voice coming out slightly higher than normal.

Dolls, who had been rocking from side to side with a small, bundled, gurgling, real-live _baby_ in his arms, stops dead in his tracks.  There’s a flash of guilt in his eyes before he comes closer.  She has to stop herself from taking a step back, but he must catch her because he snorts, “It’s a baby, not a bomb, Wynonna.”

“Uh-huh.  Why is it here?”

“Well, it’s not a _normal_ baby,” he mutters.

“Of course it isn’t,” she sighs, peering over his arm.  And, okay, the kid is cute—she can objectively say it’s a very cute kid, even if the thought of having even minimal contact with a child makes her want to run in the opposite direction—olive-skinned and curly-haired and batting the air with a tiny fist.  It’s also got the nice addition of pointy ears and eyes that are a few shades too light to be completely human, gold enough almost to glow.  “So, what is it?”

“Dunno yet,” he replies.

“And yet you’ve cleaned out Wal-Mart’s baby section,” she observes, looking around her at toys, bottles, formula, and a _crib_.  “Really?  There isn’t some mythical creatures’ CPS we could call?”

“Um, no, first of all,” he scowls.

“Just so it’s said out loud—did you find a baby, buy a bunch of shit for it, and bring it back here?” she asks, eyebrows climbing.

“Yes.”

“I need a drink,” she grumbles, dropping her bag as she stomps into the kitchen.  She pauses, looks back.  “And I’m not changing any diapers.”

\--

It’s not that she means for the name to stick, but they’ve been calling him “the baby” for almost three days when she comes into the living room and says, “Just call him Dante.”

“As in _The Divine Comedy?”_ he sighs, looking forlorn.

“It can’t be good for him to not have a name, and since he didn’t come with a basket and a letter…” she trails off and shrugs.

“You told _me_ not to get attached,” he points out.

“I’m not attached, but I don’t want to find out the mystery kid you found next to a _lake_ grew up with some kind of complex because you didn’t want to name him,” she responds.

“That’s a terrible name.”

“It was that or Damien,” she sings sweetly.

And it’s later that day that he pushes a wriggling, barely dressed and freshly bathed Dante into her hands.  Holding him a little like he’s a puppy she’s worried will pee on her, she laughs, “Um, no thank you.”

Huffing exasperatedly, he shakes his head and mumbles, “Baby, Wynonna, he’s a baby.  Just… hold him.”

Wide-eyed, she stares him down until he starts moving her around like a puppet until the kid’s securely against her chest, tiny fist immediately tangling in her shirt.  “This is really fuckin’ weird,” she whispers.

“Little ears,” he reminds, grinning.

“Why did you hand me the baby?” she demands.

“Just… entertain him so I can shower,” he says, giving her a look that indicates _she’s_ being the weird one that she resents.  “And don’t swear at the baby.”

“No promises,” she mutters.

The pipes whine when he gets the shower running, and Dante’s little chin starts wiggling and it strikes a very real fear through her.  Awkwardly, she jostles him as she paces.  People don’t just give her children.  Dolls knows this.  There’s a very good reason people don’t give her children—because she shouldn’t be around them.  Lucky for her, he quiets fairly quickly.

Until she tries to sit.

Pushing to her feet again, she hisses, “Awwh, shh—sugar.”

\--

Maybe it’s a biological thing, but Dolls is sorta mind-meltingly cute with the baby.  It makes her want to climb him a little.  All she can do is stare as he holds Dante up, sometimes blowing raspberries on his tiny tummy and other times making “airplane noises” as he swoops him around.  The baby squeals delightedly and Wynonna can’t hold back her smile even as she wrings her hair out into a towel.  Not having noticed her, he sets him down gently on the couch and makes an appropriate _kaboosh_ sound.

Coming closer, she sits cross-legged on the floor next to the couch and offers her finger for Dante to gum at, asking, “Any closer to finding out what he is?”

“I’m guessing werewolf, but we won’t know until my contact gets back to me with the DNA results, but the eyes match, if memory serves,” he murmurs.  His face is weirdly fond, and he looks relaxed, and she feels a sudden irrational pang.  “Even if it’s not that, we can probably get a pack to take him.  Pretty family-centric.”

She chews on that for a while.  “So you don’t think his parents are alive?”

“No,” he says simply.  “You gonna be okay when I’m at work?”

“Um,” she laughs.  “Probably.  Keep your phone on.”

He bends forward to smack a quick kiss to her lips, fingers tracing her jaw.  “You’ll be fine, keep him entertained,” he soothes.  “Don’t drop him and you’re golden.”

“Uh-huh, that’s comforting,” she snorts.

When it’s just her and Dante in the small apartment, she chews her cheek self-consciously before muttering, “Alright, kid, entertain you, right?  That’s… that’s gonna be fine.”

Kicking his feet, Dante doesn’t respond.

\--

“Okay, bath time, little man,” she sing-songs, dipping her fingers into the water for about the thousandth time to make sure it’s not too warm.  (She’d also, not that Dolls needs to know, read about ten WikiHow’s on how to bathe a baby.  Add that to the list of things she never thought she’d be Googling.)  She sets him in the fancy little chair that sits in the sink and tickles his little feet.  He screams and kicks and sloshes water all over her.

On the counter, her phone pings, and she dries her hands before grabbing it, not moving away from the baby.  It’s just Dolls making sure they haven’t died yet.  She smiles and tells Dante, “He’s right to be worried, you know,” before snapping a picture of him splashing happily.

And, okay, _maybe_ it’s not as bad as she thought it’d be.  It gets pretty bad when he’s bawling in the middle of the night, or when all she wants is a nap but he is wide awake after she’s home for the day.  She finds it’s pretty easy to shove those inconveniences away.  She realizes, horrified, that she may actually really like this baby.

It’s a pretty worrying prospect.

After bath time is over and she is thoroughly soaked, she gets him dressed with minimal disasters (unlike the first time, which had been awful) and lays him on a blanket spread out on the floor.  She sits with him, playing peekaboo and offering little toys that he thrashes around before throwing at her.  When the plastic keys hit her in the mouth for about the third time, she offers a tiny elephant toy, making kissy noises as he tries to catch its trunk with his mouth.  She finds herself cooing over him, pretending to nibble on his toes and fingers and smiling at his little laughs.

\--

She gets a text from Nicole about a week after Dolls found the baby asking when they decided to adopt.  Snorting, she shoots a quick, _How did you know about the baby?_ Dante is curled in Dolls’ arms when she gets the response—a picture of her, scowling at her spit-up covered shirt.  She doesn’t even remember Dolls taking the picture.

“Dude, why does this exist?” she demands, brandishing her phone like a weapon.

Looking guilty, he backs away from her and warns, “No violence in front of the baby.”

Groaning, she storms off to the bedroom and tosses him a quick, “I gotta call my sister-in-law.”

Shut away in their bedroom, she dials Nicole.  The first words she hears are, “Did you think two mothers wouldn’t know what that was?”

“Dude, I didn’t even know he took the pic,” she sighs.  “And we didn’t adopt a baby.  He sorta… found a baby.”

“Of course he found a baby,” Nicole howls.

“Right?”

It takes a long time for the other woman to sober, but when she does she asks, “Would it be safe to assume, then, that you don’t know about the video?”

“The words I’ve always dreaded hearing,” Wynonna responds sagely.

“It’s really cute,” Nicole croons.  “Super cute.  I’ll send it to you, just don’t kill the guy.  The only caption was like forty hearts.”

Flopping down across the bed, she grumbles, “I _guess_ he can continue to live.  How are your little monsters, anyway?”

“Why do you say that like you don’t love them?” the other woman asks, frown evident in her voice.

“I love them a helluva lot more now that they can take instruction,” Wynonna replies pointedly.

“I can’t believe you let him make you hold a _baby_ your _sister_ only got you to hold each of them like… twice, right?” she recalls.  “And you always looked like you were gonna bust a blood vessel.  Why do kids scare you so much?”

For a while, Wynonna is silent and scrubs her face with her fingers.  “I’m not _scared_ of kids.  I shouldn’t be _around_ kids, that’s all.  They’re… small.”

“’Small?’  That the best you got?”

“They’re small and impressionable and I… leave an impression,” she amends lamely.

\--

“We got a confirmation!” Dolls crows, looking up from his phone.  “And I am _good_.”

“So, he’s a werewolf?” she guesses, absently bouncing Dante in her lap.

“Yeah, he is,” he laughs.  “Trying to coordinate a plan for a pack to take him,” he explains, dropping to his knees in front of them to poke at the baby’s tummy.  “Yeah,” he coos, “Great big werewolf family, won’t have to hang out with us humans anymore.”

“You can just say you’ll miss him,” she snorts.

“It’ll be better for him, though,” he responds thoughtfully.

“But you’ll miss him,” she pushes, letting Dante take her hands and wave her hands around.

“Well, we weren’t gonna keep him, he’s not a puppy,” Dolls points out.

Tilting her head to the side, Wynonna snickers.  “He’s kind of a puppy.”

“Please don’t refer to the child as a puppy when we find him a home,” he sighs, pinching the bridge of his nose.  His posture is tense, and she nudges his knee with her bare toe.

Before she can say anything, Dante starts to fuss.  “Uh-oh, sounds like dinner time,” she sings.

“I got it,” he offers, taking the baby.  In spite of getting a blessed moment alone—something in short supply over the last two weeks—she follows him into the kitchen to fix the bottle while he rocks, cooing, “I know, buddy, I know, dinner soon.”

“Every time you do that, I die a little inside,” she mumbles, passing him the bottle.

“Yeah, yeah,” he grunts.

\--

Unlike literally everything else in their ridiculous lives, finding a pack willing to take Dante is fairly quick.  Apparently, there _are_ some people who, even after their scrapes with the BBD, still were willing to deal with Dolls.  It’s actually kind of a comforting thought.  It takes them _three days_ to get in touch with a couple he ran across years before he came to Purgatory.

“They’re seriously the foster parents of the supernatural world,” Dolls explains, shrugging as he loads the last of the baby stuff into the trunk.  “Even small packs have like at least a dozen kids running around.  And it’ll be good for him to grow up with other werewolves.  And these two are good people.  Big pack, lots of connections, can handle all the legal shit.”

“I’m thoroughly convinced that this is the best choice for him,” she says gently, wondering if it’s not her he’s trying to convince and staring confusedly at the car seat that’s already been buckled in.  “Okay, dude, I have no idea… why does this thing have so many straps?”

“Let me get it,” he chuckles, pushing her out of the way.

Leaning her hip against the car, she watches him work magic and catches him before he passes her.  She cranes up to kiss him sweetly.  “Don’t freak out,” she whispers.

“That’s my line,” he rumbles.

“Yeah, but you’re freaking out,” she teases.  “Are you scared of being an empty-nester?”

“Shut _up_ ,” he groans.  “Get in the car, we’re gonna be late.”

The drive is roughly two hours of flat countryside and way too many cows.  Behind her, Dante is mostly quiet, only spitting out his pacifier like three times the whole ride.  At the hour-and-a-half mark, she turns to him and mutters, “Next time you find an infant, can I skip the drop-off?”

\--

In spite of being, well, werewolves, the couple is _aggressively_ normal.  Both accountants, Eric and Tonja Osmon are both slight, unimposing figures and she never would have guessed what they are.  He’s got a sharp nose and sharper eyes, she’s short and round and hugs Dolls when she sees him.  They met them in front of a modest house in one of the thousands of nondescript suburbs across America.

It’s Eric who invites them inside, helping them unload the trunk while Wynonna frees Dante’s carrier from the back seat.  She can’t help but smile when Tonja comes close to look at his peacefully sleeping face, whispering, “Oh, he’s just darling.”

“Yeah,” Wynonna hears herself agree.  There’s something heavy in her chest that she doesn’t really want to examine.

Inside, Dolls chats and jokes and generally acts like a human would, so she’s assuming there’s a story here she hasn’t heard yet.  She doesn’t press, though, just listens (because she can press on the way home, no need to do so in front of strangers—she must have matured).  Eventually, Tonja asks, “So, what’s the story with you two?  I thought you worked alone.”

“Oh, there was a curse,” Wynonna laughs, intentionally vague.  “He helped break it.  It was true love’s first kiss.”

Dolls rolls his eyes.  “I’m not with Black Badge anymore,” he explains.

The rest of the afternoon is kind of a blur.  Here’s what stands out:  Tonja invites them to stay for lunch, Dante wakes up and screams to be fed, the chatter grows as mundane as it can given how all of them live, and Tonja hugs her warmly when it’s time for them to go, thanking them and promising emails.  On their way out, Wynonna bumps up against his shoulder and smiles gently when he looks at her.  He answers with one of his own and tosses her the keys.  “Your turn.”

\--

Their first night alone in weeks and Wynonna can’t sleep.  She flops onto her back, Dolls’ arm stays firmly across her middle, and she whispers, “Are you awake?”

“I am now,” he mumbles into the pillow.

She rolls to face him, moonlight filters in through the window enough for her to see his face.  “I don’t—I don’t want kids,” she says slowly.  “Ever, I don’t think.”  His hand comes up, thumb sweeping over her cheekbone.  The roiling thing in her gut wants out but she doesn’t know how to say it.  “We… haven’t really ever talked about it, but like you _like_ kids and I…”

After a beat, he presses his lips to her forehead.  “Wynonna,” he murmurs against her skin.  “You held your sister’s kids like… twice each.  It wasn’t that hard to figure out.”

“I just,” she stops, biting hard on her lip.  “I don’t want you to realize you wasted all this time with me if that’s what you want.”

“I’m not wasting my time,” he answers.  “I love you, and I’m happy to have you by my side, kids or no kids.”

She doesn’t say it, but after all these years she’d thought it’d stop sending a thrill to her gut when he says that.  Allowing herself a small smile, she curls against his chest.  “You know, I kinda love you too,” she whispers into his neck.

“I hadn’t noticed,” he laughs lowly.

**Author's Note:**

> So this was really just inspired by that BTS video of Melanie Scrofano trying to say the word "mindfuck" without saying the word "fuck." That's all. It spiraled from there. Set about 4-7 years in the future???
> 
> Take a look at my [Tumblr](http://johnisntevendead.tumblr.com) where I cry a lot about these guys and also about my life in general.


End file.
